Rizal the Romantic
The Women in His Life
At least nine attachments are recorded across Laguna, Madrid, Tokyo, London, Biarritz, Brussels, and Dapitan.
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The Nine
Segunda Katigbak
Of Lipa, Batangas — the puppy love of his fourteenth year, already promised to a townmate when he met her.
Leonor Valenzuela
A tall girl of Pagsanjan, courted with notes written in invisible ink, to be read over the warmth of a lamp.
Leonor Rivera
His cousin from Camiling and the great attachment of his youth; they were engaged for eleven years. Letters were intercepted, and in 1890 she married an Englishman, Henry Kipping. The blow reached him in Europe.
Consuelo Ortiga y Pérez
Daughter of a Madrid official; he wrote verses for her, then withdrew — partly out of loyalty to Leonor, partly to spare a friendship.
O-Sei-San (Seiko Usui)
Tokyo, 1888. A brief and tender attachment during his six weeks in Japan, remembered warmly for the rest of his life.
Gertrude Beckett
Eldest daughter of his London landlord, who helped him with his sculpture and his household while he worked at the British Museum.
Nelly Boustead
Of the wealthy Filipino-British family at Biarritz. A marriage was contemplated and came to nothing over differences of religion and fortune.
Suzanne Jacoby
Of Brussels, the niece of his landladies, who wrote to him with real affection after he left.
Josephine Bracken
Of Hong Kong, who came to Dapitan in 1895 as companion to a blind patient and stayed. They lived as husband and wife; a child was born and did not survive. She was with him in his last hours at Fort Santiago.
A Historian's Note
The catalogue of Rizal's romances has been much embroidered since 1896. What the letters actually show is a young man of great charm and great restlessness who formed attachments easily and left them reluctantly — and who told Blumentritt, more than once, that the work came first.
Plates of the Affections
Ang mga babae sa kanyang buhay, at ang huling pag-iisang dibdib.